Hidden from the Holt Road are the relics of a prosperous past, the skeleton of a once-magnificent manor house once home to the Heydon family, a hidden gem now owned by English Heritage and boasting a very curious caretaker: a spectral sentry.

Just a stone’s throw from the swallowed town of Shipden and Cromer’s famous pier, local folklore tells of a ghost dog that haunts the beach, waiting where the waves break on the sand for an owner who never returned from the sea.

It is the vanishing village that just can’t stay silent, a forgotten parish from the Norfolk coast that was swallowed by the sea, the county’s own Atlantis just a stone’s throw from the famous Cromer Pier.

The earliest depictions of the devil show him in various forms – with scaly skin, folded wings and with cloven hooves, often attributed to early illustrations of the Pagan God Pan, who would have been reviled by good Christians.

Unseasonal storms had all but blown away by the time that the former Lord Mayor of Norwich, London MP and their friend went for a stroll on Eccles beach in Norfolk, a quiet stretch of coastline – or it was until the appearance of Norfolk Nessie.

It is a curious inscription that links a quiet Norfolk village to an infamous French Queen who became a symbol of the excesses of the monarchy and famous for a quote she may never have even said: “let them eat cake”.

It’s a lament said to travel across the centuries, a shriek that rips through time to tell the tale of a woman who loved and lost and whose spirit wanders in North Norfolk, restlessly searching for the baby murdered by her jealous husband.

Her birth was a Blessing, but her death was a curse: Rebecca Nurse from Great Yarmouth was one of three sisters accused of witchcraft at the infamous Salem Witch Trials and was the second person to be hanged.

It’s one of East Anglia’s most enduring folk tales, that of a midnight black hell hound with eyes as red as glowing coals that roams the countryside and brings death to the door of anyone unfortunate to lock eyes with him.